British parents have long known that handing your kids an iPad full of children’s TV shows is a good way to keep them quiet for a while appropriately entertained and informed. The BBC has made that job even easier today by launching a special iPlayer Kids app. The iPad app, which has a user-interface suitable for young children, features only age-appropriate TV shows.

The new child-friendly app is safe and easy to use. With over 10,000 episodes being made available this year alone, it has all of BBC Children’s world-class content in one place, allowing kids to discover and enjoy both new and old CBeebies and CBBC favourites including Wolfblood, Blue Peter, The Dumping Ground, Topsy & Tim and Go Jetters.

Each child in the family creates their own profile, complete with their age and a cartoon character to represent them, and the app them automatically filters the shows offered.

Pre-school children (under five) are only shown CBeebies content, while children over five are shown both CBBC and CBeebies content (customised to be suitable for their age).

The BBC says it created the app in recognition of the fact that children’s programs are the most popular genre watched through iPlayer.

Spotlight support means that you to search for BBC TV shows by swiping down from the homescreen, while Handoff allows you to seamlessly pick up where you left off when switching between devices. The BBC notes that it has also fixed a nasty bug.

In addition to all that good stuff, we’ve also included a fix for a particularly nasty crash on launch, and last but not least, you can now find an entire catalogue of iPlayer programmes for a channel via the A-Z option in the channel page.

Fellow Britons, the wait is almost over. iPlayer is finally making its way to the Apple TV. The BBC announced via its official Twitter handle that its popular catch-up and live-streaming service is making its way to the brand new Apple TV in the coming months. The company didn’t confirm exactly when the iPlayer app for new Apple TV would arrive, and from the looks of things, it won’t be coming to the current Apple TV. Although it doesn’t say explicitly that iPlayer won’t be coming to the 2nd and 3rd generation Apple TVs, the fact it states ‘new Apple TV’ suggests pretty strongly that it will only be on the new, 4th gen model.

For UK Apple TV owners, the lack of a native iPlayer app has been a constant source of frustration. Right now, customers are forced to use AirPlay from their iPhones or iPads if they want to view iPlayer content on their Apple TVs. Once the app launches for tvOS, we’ll be able to put our iPhones and iPads down, and just watch great programming right from the Apple TV. More important than the convenience is that we’ll undoubtedly save precious battery life.

In a Radio Festival interview in London by Zane Lowe‘s former boss, Lowe told Radio 1 head Ben Cooper that Beats 1 is like a new-born baby.

We’ll grow up, but right now we’re three months old, and babies make a lot of noise, they look at the world all wide-eyed and they shit everywhere. That’s kind of what Beats 1 is, it’s very, very new, 13 weeks man, it’s crazy. It’s all new and weird – and no rules man, no rules.

He said that despite the high-profile nature of the station, he wasn’t taking its future for granted. Asked why Apple Music needs Beats 1, Lowe said he wasn’t sure that it did … expand full story

The BBC iPlayer app, which provides streaming and downloadable access to BBC television shows in the UK, has joined Hulu and Pocket in supporting the new Picture in Picture feature in iOS 9.

As with other apps, press the home button once while playing a show and the video window becomes a small floating window that you can resize and reposition while using other iPad apps. The functionality is available on the iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 2 and 3.

The BBC announced in a blog post this morning that mobile downloads are coming to its iPlayer Radio app just in time for the BBC Proms. For the first time – using the iPlayer Radio app – customers will be able to download radio shows (and the Proms) to listen offline and keep them for up to 30 days. To make use of this new service, all you need to do is ensure you have the latest version of the BBC iPlayer Radio smartphone or tablet app for iOS, Android or Kindle.